The New Teacher
by Werepuppy Black
Summary: The new English teacher was young, pretty, and possessed a good fashion taste. She was also a witch, but no one in Stokley Grammar was aware of this little fact. Except Vlad, that is.


_**A/N:**__ This was originallly written back in 2009. It's been on my AO3 account, and I've finally opted to bring it over here. Enjoy!_

* * *

The new English teacher, Miss Mildred Hubble, was young, pretty, and possessed a good fashion taste. She was also a witch, but no one in Stokley Grammar was aware of this little fact.

Except Vlad, that is.

It was the last class of the last Friday of the month, double English. Usually this was met with many moans and groans, and a great dislike by all around, but Miss Hubble had made a deal with the class. If they got the essay done for the lesson before, she would give them this double as free time. Surprisingly, this arrangement had worked, as even the slackers in the class had put the effort in to get the free time. Vlad did put this down to Miss Hubble being pretty though, especially when taking into consideration the biggest slacker was Richard Price, and he had been a literal angel for Miss Hubble.

"I'm telling you," Vlad said to Robin, flicking lazily through his comic, "she's a witch."

"Vlad, she's not a witch!" Robin insisted. "I think _I'd_ be able to tell if she was a witch," he said, turning and looking up at Miss Hubble with a sickening dreamy grin. "Isn't she _amazing_ Vlad?" he said, lost to his adoring thoughts of Miss Hubble. "I bet she likes me, she keeps smiling over at me."

"Robin, how would you know?" he asked, before shaking his head, "anyway, you think every girl that smiles at likes you," Vlad pointed out, not unkindly, even though he couldn't help but feel a bit fed up with Robin constantly falling in love with other people. Especially if they weren't him. Robin, of course, didn't see it like that. His face fell, and he scowled at Vlad unpleasantly.

"Just because no one fancies you Vlad," he sniffed, before turning back to face Miss Hubble, his dreamy expression firmly back on his face. "She really likes me, I'm sure of it." As he spoke, Miss Hubble was making her way through the desks, giving out the essays she had marked. It was a mark in her favour, Vlad thought, that she did try to hand out the essays as soon as she possibly could. Of course, he did again link the speed of her marking to her witchy powers. He was sure he had spotted her magic speed reading through them the other day.

"Here you go boys, they were both great efforts," she smiled in that encouraging manner all teachers seemed to share. "Vlad, watch your sentences, they tend to run on a little," she advised, handing back the essay. Vlad shrugged, looking through it carefully. He had only just managed to finish the essay in time, and this was at least the fifth go of it; things kept happening to his original copies. It wasn't as though it was a hard essay to write; it was imaginative writing. "And Robin, what imagination!" She beamed at him, showing a big 'A' in the corner of the paper, as well as two added gold paper stars. "You really should consider entering the Halloween writing competition the school is having," she enthused.

"You really think it was alright, Miss?" Robin asked, looking up at her somewhat shyly. "My last teacher kept saying my writing was too gruesome, an' weird," he said, sounding quite upset about it all. Miss Hubble smiled sweetly at him.

"What can I say?" Her grin grew slightly. "I like weird." She walked away after this, and Robin turned, excitedly, to face Vlad.

"Vlad, did you hear that?"

"Hm, what?" Vlad asked, blinking as he looked up from his essay. He hadn't been focusing on the essay really, his mind had wandered towards the bill he was trying to get the Council to pass at the moment, which would lead to more vampire children going to a breather school, and receiving an education that would allow them to blend into the world better on receiving their full powers. He had been using his own experiences as a lot of the basis for this, but so far the Council had been reluctant to agree with him, and he had to be careful. He was already on very risky ground, being the youngest Grand High Vampire to ever try to keep power. His being the Chosen One wasn't really any great help until he was 16.

"She really fancies me!"

Vlad's face fell. Oh... poo.

**xXx**

A few weeks later, and a highly anticipated day had finally arrived. The relatively new, but extremely popular, young author Nick Hobbes had chosen Stokley Grammar as one of the schools he would visit on his signing tour. Hobbes wrote mostly fantasy stories, building up a deeply rich world in which his readers could get totally immersed into, with developed, and fully relatable, characters. At least, according to his publicists. The reality of it wasn't much different, but they often left out that the majority of male readers questioned admitted to preferring the surprisingly well described fight scenes, in which censoring didn't seem to exists, and the majority of female readers questioned admitted that the character development, including the love triangle between Nathan, Maia, and Byron, were their favourite parts of the series. Of course, there were those who simply preferred the author himself, but the publicists wisely chose to leave that out.

After all, Mr. Hobbes' fiancée might not like it.

It had been decided that he would take each year two at a time at assembly. As it worked out, Vlad and Robin's year and the year above were the last to go; during the double period of English on a Friday, which meant that Miss Hubble joined them. Nick Hobbes, Vlad was surprised to discovered, rocked what most people in his year called – when Robin wore it at least – the awful poseur Goth look. Judging by the whispers of Kelsey and Delilah, who were sitting in the row in front of Robin and Vlad – which oddly enough happened to be the front row – the girls were in agreement that whatever made the look not suit Robin, Mr Hobbes suited it perfectly.

The talk simply enough. "I'm not one for long drawn out speeches," Hobbes had admitted, "so I'll get straight to it. This is one stop of many on the signing tour of my new book _Secrets of WyrdSyster_, which is the latest instalment of the Magic Secrets Chronicles. If you want, you can put in an order for a signed copy with the librarian, or you can buy and pay today to get one," he paused. "Yes, I know it sounds like money grubbing, but I need to pay the printing somehow." There was an outbreak of gentle laughing, showing that he had effectively broken the ice. From there on, the assembly went quite well. They were read a chapter of the book, which Vlad found himself enjoying more than he had originally thought.

At least, he enjoyed what he managed to hear of it. Robin had decided to keep up a running commentary. "He writes and illustrates his stuff, like I do. I could be as good as him, better even. I could write loads of series, each book a tome on its own, and win loads of prizes, and make a heap of money." Just when it looked like Robin might finally be quiet, it turned out he had only taken a breath to come out with another rambling stream. "And look, that's my look they're all drooling over. He's got to be a wizard or something; I'm much better looking than him and they don't droll over me like that..." his nattering continued, with Vlad interjecting with the usual 'yes Robin' or 'no Robin' responses.

It was during the actual signing portion of the assembly, that Vlad noticed something odd. He had been in the middle of stretching his neck, which had been feeling stiff from just sitting for so long, when he looked over at where the teachers were sitting. He blinked, wanting to take sure he wasn't mistaking it, but no, he recognised that look. He had seen it often enough. He turned, to see where the look was directed, and blinked. There was a matching look, though no one seemed to be noticing it.

This would probably not turn out well.

**xXx**

That afternoon, Robin had somehow convinced Vlad to hang around slightly longer than usual. Vlad wasn't sure how it happened, but he suspected it was simply due to the shock of hearing Robin saying he didn't want to rush out of school as quickly as usual. To be fair, a few people were choosing to hang around slightly longer than usual, and it was those who usually wouldn't – such as Price and Watson and their lot, as well as Kelsey and Delilah and their usual lot of giggling girls.

For once, Vlad saw the appeal in running out as soon as the bell rang.

"Robin," he said slowly, highly suspecting he knew the reason as to why Robin wanted to hang around slightly, "you know how you think Miss Hubble likes you?" he asked. Robin turned to face him, a look of smugness on his face.

"I don't _think_ she likes me Vlad," he said, smiling smugly, "I _know_ she likes me." Vlad resisted the urge to roll his eyes, reminding himself firmly that Robin was his friend, and friends were not food. No matter how annoying they got.

"Yeah, like I said, you know how you think that?" He said, looking over. "What if she already has a boyfriend?" Robin gave a look, his smile faltering slightly

"Well..."

"Just wondering Robin, that's all."

"Well its easy then," Robin said, his face returning to the full smug smile. "She clearly likes me better, so she'll dump him, an' we'll go out." Vlad felt as though he should point out that Miss Hubble was at the very least ten years older than him, and that most countries frowned on teacher-student relationships, but he had the strongest feeling that Robin would just brush off his comments with a shrug. This, he felt, proved that he had learnt from his past mistakes. "What's taking her so long anyway?" Robin asked out loud, looking towards the front doors of the school.

As if the Gods of Irony were listening, the doors opened at that moment. Kelsey, who had been standing nearest the door, fixing her makeup, started forward quickly, before stopping in her step.

"Oh," Miss Hubble blinked, before smiling widely. "Hello, Kelsey, I didn't expect you to be hanging around this late," she said, looking up casually to quickly count how many were still hanging around. "Is there something you were looking for?"

"Think they wanted to see me," Hobbes said, standing behind Miss Hubble. "It happens," he admitted with a shrug.

"Miss," Kelsey said looking between them as though she were confused, "do you know each other or something?"

"Erm, yes actually," Miss Hubble said, turning round to smile brightly at Hobbes, "I do know him. Quite well as a matter of fact." Robin looked over, the grin he had been wearing gone. "We're actually engaged." Robin looked as those his heart had been crushed. Vlad automatically wrapped a sympathetic arm around his friend's shoulder. He didn't like seeing him upset, even if he knew it was for his own good.

**xXx**

"Why does it always happen Vlad?" Robin asked later that evening, sitting in the throne room, nursing a cup of his favourite fizzy drink. "Why do the girls I like always have someone else?" Vlad gave a small shrug. "And the kicker is he's so much like me! We both write and illustrate, as well as pull off the Goth look!" He scoffed, and stared down at the table. "You're lucky, really, you don't know what it feels like to like someone else so much, and not have them like you back." Vlad stared. He could easily contradict what Robin said.

"Yeah, you're right Robin, I don't know."

It could keep


End file.
